HISPANIOLA REDISCOVERED
BY JACOB GAYER
Staff Photographer of the National Geographic Society
With Illustrations by the Author
"
T IS a marvel; the mountains and
Shills, and plains, and fields, and the
k soil so beautiful and rich for plant
ing and sowing, for breeding cattle of
all sorts, for building towns and villages.
There could be no believing, without see
ing, such harbors as are here, as well
as many and great rivers and excellent
waters, many of which contain gold.
"The lands there are high and in it there
are many ranges of hills and most lofty
mountains; all most beautiful in a thou
sand shapes and full of trees so tall they
seem to reach the sky. And I am assured
that they never lose their foliage, as may
be imagined, since I saw them as green
and as beautiful as they are in Spain in
May, and the nightingale was singing, and
other birds of a thousand sorts, in the
month of November, round about the way
I was going.
"There are wonderful pine groves and
very large plains of verdure, and there is
honey and many kinds of birds and great
diversity of fruits. Espafiola is a marvel."
In these words the first travel writer
of the Western World paid tribute to the
island which sprawls like a Brobdingnag
ian frog in the waters that unite the At
lantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and
separates Cuba from Porto Rico.
And as one visits that island of Haiti
to-day, studying its flora and fauna, climb
ing its mountains, prospecting its valleys,
the realization comes that Christopher
Columbus could picture newly discovered
lands as well as he could navigate un
known seas.
TWO REPUBLICS IN AN AREA SMALLER
THAN SOUTH CAROLINA
Though not quite so large as the State
of South Carolina, Haiti has two govern
ments and two peoples-the Republic of
Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The
international boundary which separates the
two nations is not along a great natural
barrier, for at places one may wade a
stream that divides them. But if there
were a Chinese Wall, with its top sprinkled
with broken glass, it would not more effec
tually mark the passage from one country
to the other than do the human barriers
of alien races, languages, and traditions.
Within the 19,ooo square miles of ter
ritory of Santo Domingo, to call the east
ern republic by its popular name, there is
an amazing diversity of climate. Going
from the city of Santo Domingo to Azua,
for instance, is like going from the east
coast of Florida to the arid areas of New
Mexico. Desert cacti take the place of
waving palms and dry sands succeed jun
gle-covered soil, while mountain and des
ert, high plateau and coastal plain, offer
an almost unbelievable variety in scenery
and in plant and animal life.
ORIGINALLY ALL ROADS FROM EUROPI LED
TO IT
Three times it has been my privilege to
see this land Columbus loved so well that
his dying request was that his ashes should
find their last resting place here. My
first visit was ten years ago, when I trav
eled throughout the length and breadth of
the country on horseback. In 1929 I came
again. Good roads between the principal
cities had taken the place of muddy trails,
automobiles had relegated horses and don
keys to the side roads, and a photographer
in an hour could cover the distance that
before had been a day's journey.
My third visit was by air, as a mem
ber of the National Geographic Society's
Aerial Expedition to South America (see
pages 1-79).
In the three journeys my modes of travel
had covered thousands of years of the
evolution of ways of going about, and my
points of view had ranged from the inti
mate outlook of a mud-bound traveler to
the broad survey of the eagle.
As one looks down upon the country
from the air, it is easy to sense the fact
that Santo Domingo is the roof of the
American Mediterranean. From Florida
eastward, succeeding islands rise higher
and higher until an elevation of around
Io.ooo feet is reached in the heart of the